RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK (20 page)

She seized her mother, unaccountably, and hugged and kissed her feverishly. And she laughed as she did so--laughed with a curious sobbing effect. Then she turned and fled like one possessed out of the room and down the stairs to where the phone was. She dialled a number. She made the wheel go around so fast it sounded like rain hitting a tin bucket.

A voice answered.

She said, "Was it you?"

"Yes," he said.

"Oh, I knew it was, I knew it was!"

"I didn't want to," he said. "I tried not to. But Madeline, I can't hold out any longer."

"Oh, Jack, I can't hold out either. It's no use, no use. Everything was so still all night long. And now all I hear is music, coming from everywhere at once. Oh, Jack, for the first time in my life, I think, I'm falling desperately in love--" Then she begged piteously, "Jack, don't hurt me too much, will you?"

"The clock at the Carlton," he suggested softly.

"Yes," she said, half deliriously. "Oh, yes--yes. Any time you say, any night--from now on."

She came down the stairs ready to go out, and she found that her father had somebody closeted with him in the library. She could hear the voices. Some stranger. Some man he'd brought home with him. Some business friend or associate, perhaps. She caught a glimpse of him as she passed the doorway. Someone she'd never seen before.

She shrugged the matter off. It held no interest for her.

Her mother suddenly appeared from nowhere, stopped her as she'd reached the front door and was about to open it. Her mother acted frightened. Well, awed by something or about something. Taut.

"He wants to see you. He wants you to go in here."

"I'm just leaving. Four-star date. Tell him I'll see him when I come back."

"No, it's something important. You'd better go in, Mad. I promised I'd send you to him the minute you--"

Whether she would have or not, she wasn't sure herself. But suddenly he'd heard their voices and appeared in the library entry.

"Madeline," he said. "Come in here, please." And he wasn't smiling.

She went in.

Her mother attempted to follow at her heels.

"Not you, my dear," he said inflexibly, and closed the door in her face.

The other man got up.

Her father was taking it big, whatever it was. His color wasn't good, and he kept mopping his brow in one place, right over one eye, though it needed it elsewhere as well.

"My daughter. Mad, this is Inspector Cameron." A detective, of all things! She was annoyed at being detained like this, by such an oddity. They belonged in newspaper items. The sort of items you didn't read. Not in the library of your own home--acting like actual people.

"Sit down," her father said. "This is important."

They looked at each other, he and the interloper. As if to say. Do you want to ask her or shall I?

Her father was the one who did, finally. "Have you met anyone new lately?"

She pushed her brows up until they were center forehead. She let that serve for her answer.

"That's a perfectly simple question, Madeline. Don't fence with us. We're dead serious about this."

The detective rephrased it. "Have you met anyone lately whom you didn't know previously, who wasn't included before now in your circle of friends, Miss Drew?"

Something warned her, Say no. "No," she said. "You're sure, Madeline?" her father insisted anxiously. "At anyone's house, at some party, in some restaurant--?"

"Through somebody else," the detective put in. He spread his hand. "Like, say, introduced to you by somebody you know already. A very close friend or--"

She turned her head his way, briefly, and flattened him to a run-over dime. "Oh, should you be introduced? I usually walk along the street and drop my handkerchief."

He turned all colors of the rainbow and tried to screw himself into his chair.

"Who're you meeting tonight, Madeline?" her father asked appeasingly.

She'd been ready for that since the question before.

"Someone whom I was not introduced to," she said. "He sat down in the seat next to me, and some of my belongings were on it, and he apologized, and that's how we became acquainted."

The detective stiffened, leaned forward. She loved it.

"Oh, I forgot to add that I was fifteen, and he was sixteen, and we were both in first-year high. Bill Morrissey." And she rose to leave.

They both slumped. She loved that too.

Her father looked at the detective inquiringly. "You'd better tell her, Mr. Drew," Cameron said quietly. "I think you'd better tell her."

"Tell me what?" she challenged. "You're in some danger from a man, Madeline--"

"What man?"

"Well, we don't know exactly who he is--"

A derisive note sounded from her. "If you don't know who he is, then how do you know I'm in danger from him? Well, what sort of danger? Oh, I suppose the usual kidnaping-for-ransom routine. It's getting so you haven't arrived , you're really nobody at all, until you've been kidnaped for ransom at least once. It's like being listed in Bradstreet's."

"Danger of your life, Miss Drew," the detective said patiently.

She made a gesture of mock melodramatic dismay, crossing her arms over her shoulders and stepping back. "Well, if I see anyone peering at me from under a broadbrimmed black hat, I'll let you know."

"You won't know him, Miss Drew."

" I won't even know him when I see him? Really, Inspector--"

"Madeline--" her father started to say, but she'd opened the door and eluded them.

Her mother was still hovering around outside. "What did they want, dear? What was it? They wouldn't tell me."

She had to curb herself. They'd come to the library entrance after her and were both standing there at her back. She simply shook her head at her mother, incapable of speaking. Or afraid to trust herself.

It was only when the front door had closed behind her that she let herself go. She emitted a whoop of laughter. She fairly staggered. That was the funniest thing she'd ever heard.

She was laughing so hard she could hardly see to get herself a taxi. It was death on her make-up, the way her eyes were tearing.

It took the better part of the ride for it to wear off. She laughed nearly the whole way to where she was going.

He refilled her glass. "What else did they say?" he prompted. He was enjoying it as much as she was. That was the nice thing about him, he always shared your moods with you. When you were giddy, he was giddy too.

She sputtered so she blew nearly half the champagne out of her glass. "They sat there with faces this long." She gestured across her midriff. She dropped her voice to a mock basso profundo. "'Have you met anyone new lately, Mad?' Tell the truth, doesn't that sound just like the end man in a minstrel show throwing a straight line?"

He nodded. He showed his teeth straight across, from corner to corner of his mouth, and his shoulders went up and down in a risible palpitation.

"'You tell her, Inspector.' 'No, you tell her, Mr. Drew.' Then after all this build-up, when they finally got to what it was they wanted to tell me--" She hid her face behind outspread fingers and shook with hilarity. "They didn't know who he was, or what he looked like. I wouldn't know him either, even when I saw him. Really, either my father has lost his sense of humor completely or--"

He was enjoying himself so hugely that he became downright silly in the effort to prolong their mood still further. "Maybe they mean me. After all, I am someone you've met only lately. You'd better watch out, I'll bite." And he pretended to snap his teeth at her, like a dog. That was all she needed. She threw her head back and fairly screamed. "Oh, don't start me off again," she pleaded. "My ribs ache. I can't take it any more."

On his side of the table, his own head went back and he brayed right along with her.

"Murder," he gasped.

Everyone in the place was looking their way, with half envious smiles of sympathetic approval.

"Not a care in the world," someone said. "I love to see a young couple enjoy themselves like that, while they can. They've got plenty of time for heartaches later."

He was just finishing up with his dressing for the evening when there was a knock at the apartment door.

He dropped the necktie he was holding as suddenly as though electric current had just shot through it. He made a swift dive over toward a chest of drawers. He shot the middle one out of it. A gun momentarily flashed into view, then disappeared again. His hand came away from his back pocket, empty.

He went toward the door and he said batedly, "Who's there?"

"Bill Morrissey," a voice answered curtly from the other side.

He let out his breath slowly, with a sort of silky sound. Then he unlocked the door, opened it.

Morrissey came in. Morrissey gave him a rather long-drawn stare, that started from over the threshold, went all the way around him in a long arc, and ended up on the other side of him, in the center of the room. His eyes never once quitted him during that whole time.

"I'm sorry, Bill, I'm going out."

"With my girl."

Munson didn't answer for a minute. He tried a half smile. But it was for himself, not for Morrissey. It wasn't extended to Morrissey; it wouldn't have been accepted if it had been. "Are you sure you've got the straight on that?"

Morrissey's eyes never flickered. "I'm sure."

"I don't think you have. You just said, 'You're going out with my girl.' I'm going out, all right. But not with your girl. That's the part you're balled-up on."

"I'm balled-up-hell," Morrissey said in a cold singsong. "You're going out with Madeline Drew. If you say you're not, you're a liar." The adjective he used to modify the noun was unprintable.

Munson nodded slightly. "I'm going out with Madeline Drew," he said. "Now we've finally got it straightened out. Where does the 'your girl' part come in?" He waited a moment. "And you've come here to do what about it?"

"I've come here to punch your head off."

"All right, Bill," Munson said mildly. "All right, go to it. If that'll get her back to you." He gave another of those smiles that were for himself again.

"It may not get her back," Morrissey said, narrowing his eyes wickedly, "but it'll make me feel a lot better than I do now." He backed toward the door from where he was. With hands behind his back he felt for the key, and when he'd found it, turned it and locked the door. Then took it out and shunted it into his pocket. His eyes had never left Munson's while he was doing this, and his teeth were bared, but not in a smile.

"Put up your hands," he prompted with a misleading appearance of geniality. Probably suggested by the fact that his teeth were showing so widely.

"Don't let's be formal," Munson said ironically. "If you're going to sock me, then sock me with them down." He made no move to defend himself. Nor yet to retreat either. He stood there half lounging, with his elbows supporting him against the top of the dresser.

Morrissey's face was yellow with bile. His coat rippled down him to the floor, somewhat like an up-ended snake shedding its skin. "You think you'll take her away from me? Well I won't let you!"

Munson shook his head slightly, almost as if he pitied him. "You fool," he said softly. "You can't take people away from someone, unless they want to be taken away. Don't you know that yet?"

Morrissey strode in close, swung at him viciously. It caught him on the side of the face, and since the bureau was supporting him at his back, he cartwheeled sideward into a crun1pled heap.

"You're yellow! Get up!"

"Oh, never mind the etiquette," Munson said almost wearily. "You don't have to have a set-up. Take me from here."

Morrissey, almost crazed by rage, reached down and hauled him bodily to his feet. Then he hit him again, so that he went down again. And went stumbling after him himself, with the violence of his own blow. Then straightened, and readied a third one. But there was nothing for it to come up against, no opposition. And that undid him. He faltered, stood there at a loss.

A change came over his face suddenly. He slapped both hands, open now, flat against it, as if to keep the other man from seeing it. "What good are my -fists?" he groaned smotheredly. "They won't get her back! And I don't know any other way."

He sought the door as if half blinded, then when he'd found it leaned against it for a moment, inert, frustrated, spent. Then took out the key, unlocked it and went out, leaving it open behind him.

Something that sounded like a gagging cough, but might have been a male sob, came drifting back along the hallway after he'd passed from sight.

Munson picked himself up painfully. He took a handkerchief and wet it and held it where his face was bleeding. He had to keep moving it around to catch all the different places. But he was smiling, distorted as the smile was; still smiling that smile meant for himself alone.

He went over to the door, walking a little unsteadily, and pushed it closed.

He took the gun out of his pocket and tossed it back into the drawer where he'd originally got it from. It had been on him the whole time. He could have shot his assailant with it a dozen times over. It was as though he hadn't wanted to. It was as though he hadn't meant it for him in the first place.